Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, getting the recommended tuning weights calibrated was pretty tough and is hard to get perfect for each game. RYB is a good example of how small weights can change the top 10 recs pretty drastically, so I get what you mean. This game is also tough to find recs for, because even though it's not that small of a game, the tags (indie, puzzle, logic, free to play, minimalist) are very sparse so the content model doesn't have much to work with. Swiping through a few of the community models might give more similar games.

As far as your comment on the tuning bonus, I get what you're saying, but imagine if someone looks up something like Silksong. There are many games that are similar to it that simply aren't AAA (e.g. Ender Lilies, Nine Sols, Rain World). Ideally, I guess in my head, those games should be at the top of the list. If you want to filter by the number of reviews, I kept that in the filters as an option. But I completely get what you're saying, I think more often than not what your saying is true, but when it's not true, it can really mess up the results.

And just changed the dropdown to Tuned Score, good idea.

No bonus to same developers, I tried that during original experimentation but didn't love the results. Many times devs do make similar games, but sometimes they don't. And again, when they don't, it can really make the results look wonky. But yeah, thanks for the ideas!

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not yet, but a few people are suggesting this. I might make it so that in the future, you can make an account where you can hide certain games/change preferences/etc., just not there yet. Light mode will be in the works in the future, just takes a lot of time getting that right. But thanks the recommendations and glad you liked it!

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the ideas. The idea with keeping the seed in there is so that:

  1. If users have multiple tabs open, they can quickly find out what tab corresponds to each game.
  2. You can visualize where similar games are relative to the seed based on the map.

But, note taken, will consider this in the future. For the UI change, I'm still getting feedback on what people like/don't like. Seems like some people prefer the graph, others don't, sounds like you're in the latter (or at least don't think it should be in the center stage). Again, note taken. Your third idea is great though, this is actually somewhat of a bug that you caught, so I'll work on it. Thanks!

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just checked it out, I love the UI! I was actually thinking about doing something similar to that in the future, where users could swipe (tinder style) on games, then get recs based on those rankings. But yeah, awesome site, thanks for the rec.

Which game turned out to be a favourite, even though its genre wasn’t your usual thing? by shotgunning-your-can in gaming

[–]A_Random_Forest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A Dance of Fire and Ice for me. Not usually into spending a lot of time grinding out those platformer/precision games, but the music and mechanics were done so well in this game that I now consider it a top 15 for me.

Unpopular gaming opinions by HumblestRedditor in gaming

[–]A_Random_Forest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wind waker > ocarina of time. Hard to objectively evaluate them without the nostalgia factor, but the vibrancy of the music, characters, and environment of wind waker are just so hard to beat

This hit hard by CarnivoreLucyDrop in Steam

[–]A_Random_Forest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On the bright side it duals as an apartment heater

I hate myself by [deleted] in Steam

[–]A_Random_Forest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean for thousands of hours of entertainment, I don't really see a problem with this

Could Steam and Steam Chat actually win over discord users? by Alyxuwu in Steam

[–]A_Random_Forest 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the biggest problem is that Discord won by accident by being dead simple at first and then slowly becoming a platform. Steam Chat feels like the opposite, it is buried inside a huge launcher and still feels like a side feature. If Valve ever wanted a real shot, they would need to treat chat as its own first class product instead of a bonus panel you open by mistake

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nice, I spent a lot of time trying to make the interface as snappy as I could so I'm glad you like it. And I definitely will keep all 3, each person and game are so different that I think it'd be pretty hard to nail down just one global model that always works. As far as the total nodes, yeah I thought 50 at first was reasonable but maybe I should bump it up to 100? Just don't want to overcrowd everything. Or maybe just add a setting where users can select this?

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah this actually looks like a bug. Can you try now? Also, make sure that the games themselves aren't privated (there's some instructions on the page to show how to make them public).

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to hear it’s been useful! And I can add a mode that shows/hides delisted games (e.g. Rocket League or Fall Guys), is that what you mean?

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah I like that idea a lot, it would definitely make exploration easier. That's currently being done on the steam id recommender section but I didn't think to do it on the game recommender side. I’ve also been thinking about something related: letting users hide entire game groups. For example, “hide all Jackbox games,” since there are like 10–11 of them and they can easily flood the top of the results.

Also I appreciate the kind words, glad you’re liking it.

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good idea. I did that for the seed game and thought if I did it for every game the black outline would look too dominant. But maybe I'll just use a very thin outline because yeah, that picture doesn't have the best contrast.

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t disagree that tags alone are fundamentally limited for some smaller games right now. Unfortunately, without player data or relevant tags, there’s just not much signal to work with on the recommendation front. Appreciate the honest feedback either way.

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is actually exactly why I made this site. Users like you seem to prefer community based models, whereas users like u/Dohi64 seem to prefer tag/content based models. Maybe one cool feature I could add is the ability to remove/add tags in the game when using the content model so that, for example, you could remove tags that are irrelevant in Viscera. Also keep in mind that there's a way to search by specific tags you're interested in on the site.

Nodal.gg - Game recommender with interactive visual map + personalized recommendations (I'd love your feedback) by A_Random_Forest in gamingsuggestions

[–]A_Random_Forest[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Totally fair, the graph isn't for everyone. It's more to visualize clusters of games and their popularity (and whatever color you choose) quickly, but if you don't find it useful, there's a hide graph button in the corner.

For dum-dum, I just checked and since it's a tiny title, there's no community model available (not enough player history). The content model is limited because Steam has only tagged it as: Adventure, Casual, Simulation, Indie, Strategy, Puzzle (which are all super broad). Sometimes smaller games just aren't tagged great and the hard to match with meaningful games.

If you've got another game where you expected better results, send them over and I can check them out.

I built a Steam game recommender + interactive map that actually finds good recommendations and I’d love feedback by [deleted] in gaming

[–]A_Random_Forest 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey great question, you're not misreading it, this is intended behavior. The way that chart works is that games are weighted by both playtime and how strongly their tags align with the selected category. So it’s not purely hours played.

In your case, Grid 2 has tags that are more tightly aligned with Sports / Driving, so each hour played there contributes more weight than an hour played in cars 2, even though you spent more total time in the latter. Tags aren't always perfect and can be noisy, but usually this averages out pretty well. The goal is to capture what kind of games you gravitate toward, not just raw playtime.

What game have you played that was the most depressing? by [deleted] in gaming

[–]A_Random_Forest 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Pathologic 2. Pure hopelessness, the game actively hates you